Penguin 2.0 – So What is Changing?

Basically, Google is continuing its mission to provide the best possible results to its search queries, and they are targeting websites that are trying to shortcut or game their search system.

Penguin 2.0 is Google’s ongoing fight to eradicate bad link building strategies. With this newest update, which was officially launched May 22nd, Google is simply tightening their algorithm to provide users with the most high-quality and relevant content possible. Their ultimate goal, with the Penguin part of their algorithm, is to identify and cut out bad link spamming.

To stay out of Google’s cross-hairs, it is important to encourage good, relevant links from authority, industry-related sites. A website or directory that is primarily set up to provide link juice to your site is probably not a good site to be linked to. Paid links, as well as link exchanges, are also not good and are against Google’s guidelines.

Google continues to emphasize that “the best way to get other sites to create relevant links to your website is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.” (Google Webmaster Tools Help Section)

Bottomline, become an authority in your industry that people find valuable and will want to refer to your content pages, and/or link to them.

Penguin 2.0 is just another move, in Google’s ongoing mission, to improve their search engine results. Work hard to provide a killer website with good, relevant content, and Google will reward you — meaning you will rank higher.

Here is a recent video that Matt Cutts of Google discusses the upcoming changes with Penguin: